Nearly every wood burning fireplace is provided with a grate to facilitate combustion and to improve heating efficiency. Fireplace grates are functionally designed to receive and contain a limited quantity of firewood. It is not uncommon, however, for grates to be loaded beyond their intended capacity by carefully balancing or positioning extra logs upon those directly supported by the grate. Such a condition is extremely hazardous and conducive to allowing the wood to roll from the grate and cause a smoke-filled room, if not a complete conflagration.
The prior art has recoginzed this problem but has come forth with devices of limited design flexibility. Examplary of this point, is the patent to Merrilees U.S. Pat. NO. 3,612,034, which shows a fireplace grate with a set of upstanding prongs that are intended to retain logs within the grate. However, the prongs have their bottom ends mechanically formed such that they will engage only a grate having a frame formed of laterally extending rib members.
This leaves unsolved the problem of the popular basket-type and dish-type fireplace grates which have frames formed of spaced rib members extending fore and aft, in contrast to the laterally extending rib members of Merrilees, and which are in broad use today.
Thus, it is an objective of the present invention to provide an advance design which meets the log roll-out problem associated with the basket-type grate, the dish-type grate, and grates of similar construction. Other objectives, including simplicity, flexibility of use, ease of manufacture, and low cost, are additional considerations in the design of the present invention.